can be proved, must involve the condemnation of Lucien de
Rubempre.

"The sudden death of Peyrade, the police agent, is attributable to
poison administered at the instigation of Jacques Collin,
Rubempre, or their accomplices. The reason for this murder is the
fact that justice had for a long time been on the traces of these
clever criminals."

And again, on the margin, the magistrate pointed to this note written by
the Prefet himself:

"This is the fact to my personal knowledge; and I also know that
the Sieur Lucien de Rubempre has disgracefully tricked the Comte
de Serizy and the Public Prosecutor."

"What do you say to this, Amelie?"

"It is frightful!" repled his wife. "Go on."

"The transformation of the convict Jacques Collin into a Spanish priest
is the result of some crime more clever than that by which Coignard made
himself Comte de Sainte-Helene."

"_Lucien de Rubempre_.

"Lucien Chardon, son of an apothecary at Angouleme--his mother a
Demoiselle de Rubempre--bears the name of Rubempre in virtue of a
royal patent. This was granted by the request of Madame la
Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Monsieur le Comte de Serizy.

"This young man came to Paris in 182... without any means of
subsistence, following Madame la Comtesse Sixte du Chatelet, then
Madame de Bargeton, a cousin of Madame d'Espard's.

"He was ungrateful to Madame de Bargeton, and cohabited with a
girl named Coralie, an actress at the Gymnase, now dead, who left
Monsieur Camusot, a silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, to
live with Rubempre.

"Ere long, having sunk into poverty through the insufficiency of
the money allowed him by this actress, he seriously compromised
his brother-in-law, a highly respected printer of Angouleme, by
giving forged bills, for which David Sechard was arrested, during
a short visit paid to Angouleme by Lucien. In consequence of this
affair Rubempre fled, but suddenly reappeared in Paris with the
Abbe Carlos Herrera.

"Though having no visible means of subsistence, the said Lucien de
Rubempre spent on an average three hundred thousand francs during
the three years of his second residence in Paris, and can only
have obtained the money from the self-styled Abbe Carlos Herrera
--but how did he come by it?

"He has recently laid out above a million francs in repurchasing
the Rubempre estates to fulfil the conditions on